Performing the nine symphonies in succession reveals their incomparable beauty

Tomorrow at the Proms, the great conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim will do what most conductors, great or otherwise, intend to do at some point in their lives. He’ll lift his baton on a cycle of all nine Beethoven symphonies – performed in this case by his own West-Eastern Divan Orchestra over a week of concerts. And as the performers return to the Albert Hall night after night to complete their cycle, so (you can guarantee) will a significant proportion of the audience, keen to collect the whole experience.

Exactly why it’s so important for conductors to deliver all these symphonies in succession, and for listeners to hear them similarly, is a complex question. But it certainly involves the thrill of connecting with one of the supreme accomplishments in the history of human endeavour: a body of work that gets compared with the building of cathedrals or the winning of wars but is actually beyond meaningful comparison with anything.

Strictly speaking, the cycle is a sequence of nine scores, written from 1800 to 1824, that now fits comfortably on five CDs; and, in the reductive manner of CDs, it doesn’t feel like such a big deal when you hold it in your hand. But deals in music get no bigger. There are other symphony cycles that are grand occasions and require more instruments on stage (try Bruckner, Mahler or Sibelius). But nothing matches the status of the Beethoven. It feels Olympian – which is why this Proms cycle is timed to finish when the London Games begin.

Beyond the realms of gesture, though, there’s something to be gained by following the flow of these nine scores and hearing each within the context of the others. It becomes what TV documentaries these days vacuously call “a journey”. And the journey is from one creative epoch to another: from the ordered classicism of the 18th century to the free romanticism of the 19th. As you pass from No 1 to No 9, the scale and boldness build, as does the size of the orchestra – so you start, as it were, in the world of Mozart and Haydn, and end up very nearly in the world of Wagner.

But if it were actually that simple, it wouldn’t be so interesting. In fact, it’s only Symphonies 3, 5, 6 and 9 that follow this trajectory of growth and progress in a nice clear line – while Nos 2, 4, 7 and 8 step back, retract in scale, and contradict the sense of Beethoven marching forward unwaveringly. What’s more, if you thought that No 9 declares an unequivocal arrival in some brave new realm of sound, just look up (on the internet: it’s all there) the unfinished sketches for what Beethoven had planned to be his No 10. The Ninth was not written as a final statement. And the Tenth, again, retracts: had it been finished, it would almost certainly have proved a modest piece that looked back to the past.

So mapping clear routes through these symphonies isn’t straightforward – and even to say that they begin in the world of Mozart and Haydn isn’t the whole truth, because you won’t find many Mozart/Haydn symphonies that start in the “wrong” key, as Beethoven’s First provocatively dares to do.

But that said, there are obvious points of progress, starting with the Third, the Eroica, whose pugilistic opening chords punch an enormous hole in music history and send the rest of this unprecedentedly momentous composition through the breach. An altogether epic score, it sets the Beethovenian agenda of a fierce, dynamic energy that startled his contemporaries.

Among the revelations of hearing Beethoven’s symphonies done on period instruments is the sense of strain as they’re taken to the limit of their capacities (and occasionally beyond). He pushed his players, made outrageous demands of them. And the excitement of that blood-sports element gets lost with our glossy, modern, world-class orchestras who take it in their stride. It’s all become too easy. And too easily available – which is why the conductor Bernard Haitink once called for an embargo on the Ninth, on the grounds that “it’s played so often it gets too much like a normal thing to do”.

Beethoven cycles, these days, have acquired a comparably worrying normality, on disc as well as in the concert hall (that Karajan recorded four between the Fifties and the Eighties was absurdly self-indulgent). But then, all conductors think that they bring something special to this repertory. Sometimes they do. And maybe Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan (who take their cycle into the recording studio later this year) will join the list of the exalted. We can only hope.

But it’s telling that some of the most vivid responses to Beethoven come from the least jaded ears. I don’t know how many Beethoven cycles Billy Joel has sat through, but I do remember him describing Beethoven’s Fifth with heart-stirring enthusiasm as “one of the biggest hits in history”, adding “there’s no video to it: he didn’t need one”. Spot on.